MFennVT$5.50/gal for #HeatingOil next winter, at least!? Yeah, we're going to be burning more #firewood for sure. Once the house is paid off, we'll be switching to some kind of #HeatPump, I hope. Can you hook #geothermal up to already installed baseboard radiators? https://vtdigger.org/2026/05/18/after-a-long-cold-winter-energy-costs-are-soaring-some-vermonters-are-reevaluating-their-options/ #Vermont
Earth Notes@MFennVT A room-by-room heat-loss analysis will tell you. A high-temperature-capable heat-pump with weather compensation makes it more likely.
@EarthOrgUK Thanks!
Thad CurtzYou might be interested in this upcoming webinar about switching radiators to using an air to water heat pump...
https://joeelectrifynow.substack.com/p/air-to-water-heat-pumpsreplace-your
Paul Southworth@MFennVT I've also been worrying about this from the perspective of being on the board of a food shelf that sometimes helps residents with utility payments. The people who need that help cannot buy heat pumps and never will. They will simply be poorer and colder than they usually are.
john lehet@MFennVT Not an expert on geothermal, but I’ve learned a lot in the last weeks, as my son’s system is currently broken. I think you could run it through your baseboards. Geothermal = about $20k for a good heat pump unit, Waterfurnace brand, and then maybe $20 to $30k for the underground loops. Geothermal is an edge case these days, with air to air units advancing so quickly.
@MFennVT What I do is that I have two mini splits, one in main living area, one in bedroom. The AC is wonderful and cheap to run. The heat from mini splits is cheap in shoulder season, but gets more expensive in very cold weather. Last year in the coldest weather it was strictly the amazing new woodstove, mini splits off. All spring, woodstove off, mini splits running.
@MFennVT With new more capable wood stove (Woodstock Progress Hybrid) I’ll probably be burning 1/2 or 3/4 cord more than I used to with the smaller Jotul to get 24/7 72 degree F, but I’ll save about $200/month in electric bills by not running the heat pumps in the real cold.
@MFennVT Air to air heat pumps, mini splits, designed for cold weather will keep their rated capacity in the coldest weather, but as it gets cold you need more and more capacity. So to rely on mini splits in real cold, you need to both oversize the unit ($$$) and then pay a bit more to run it. I’m all for wood in real cold, as I said. With the current oil prices though a good mini split even in the coldest weather is about half the cost of oil in cold, wood 1/4 the cost.
@MFennVT It also turns out with geothermal you also run into a capacity problem in real cold. Even though the ground doesn’t get cold like the air, so you keep the same efficiency, your underground loop only has so much capacity unless you oversize that. In other words the loop can only pull so much heat out of the ground for a given size.
@MFennVT This is a cool heat cost calculator. You have to fiddle with all the costs and efficiencies. For a heat pump and electric, you up the efficiency. So my heat pump I’ll call 600% efficient at 50 degrees but 150% at zero F. I keep this tab open and look at it all the time to decide which heat to use. https://woodheat.com/fuel-calculator
@johnlehet Thanks for all the info. There's definitely a learning curve, sorting all this out.
@MFennVT There definitely is. I geeked out really hard when I got my mini splits, and still I feel it’s taken some years to really get a good handle on the situation. My new woodstove is like that too. The installer, a sweep, has a similar stove from the same company. He said it took him two years to figure it out. I had been geeking out hard on stoves and figured, “It won’t take me two years…” But, maybe. Hybrid stoves are different.
@johnlehet They are. We bought a Hearthstone a few years ago. In general, we like it a lot, but it's hard not to let any smoke out of the box when you're feeding it. Our old non-hybrid stove didn't have that problem. I think it's getting better with practice, but still annoying.
@MFennVT Smoke out of the firebox is a known issue with many hearthstone stoves. My Woodstock does not do that, but it has a smoke catcher which doubles as a hand-burner. I have almost never worn gloves for woodstoving for the last million years, but I have to remember now. My hands were a mess for a little while, just awful ugly burns. I really had to adapt to that.
@johnlehet Ooh, I wonder if you can add a smoke catcher to a Hearthstone. We already have to wear gloves with the Hearthstone, so we're set there. ;)
@MFennVT It’s like a flexible flap. I can push past it with a log, but it seems to be there to keep the smoke at the top of the firebox in.
@johnlehet Huh. Interesting.